May302013

Gmail on desktop and mobile for Android and iPhone is getting a new look inbox that uses simple, easy organization to let you see what’s new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read and when.

On the desktop, “the new inbox groups mail into categories which appear as different tabs.” “Just choose the categories you want and your inbox is organized in a way that lets you see what’s new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when,” informs Gmail team.

“On the desktop, the new inbox groups your mail into categories which appear as different tabs. […] Your inbox is organized in a way that lets you see what’s new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when. You can easily customize the new inbox – select the tabs you want from all five to none, drag-and-drop to move messages between tabs, set certain senders to always appear in a particular tab and star messages so that they also appear in the Primary tab.”

There are new tabs for social updates for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Google+, promotions (newsletters, offers and other bulk messages), notifications/updates (confirmations, bills, receipts), forum messages (online groups, discussion boards, and mailing lists) and a primary tab that shows all the other messages.

To customize the new inbox – “select the tabs you want from all five to none, drag-and-drop to move messages between tabs, set certain senders to always appear in a particular tab and star messages so that they also appear in the Primary tab,” explains Gmail team.

The Smart Labels feature also has a checkbox that allows you to automatically archive messages, so that notifications, newsletters and social updates skip the inbox.

Those using Gmail for Android 4.0+ and Gmail for iPhone and iPad apps, “will now see your Primary mail when you open the app and you can easily navigate to the other tabs,” Google adds.

To try it out, click on the gear menu and select Configure inbox when it appears in the Settings options. Those who don’t want the new inbox “can simply switch off all optional tabs to go back to classic view,” “or switch to any of your other favorite inbox types.”

Gmail had a cool Labs feature that allowed reading messages: without opening them.”Message Sneak Peek displayed the first sentences from a message when you right-clicked it. You could use keyboard shortcuts to navigate to the previous or to the next message, so this was a great to quickly read messages.”

The Labs experiment is no longer available and Gmail now has a contextual menu that shows features like “move to inbox”, “archive”, “delete”, “mark as read/unread”, “move to tab” (for inbox messages). You can select multiple messages, right click and use one of the features that were also included in the Gmail toolbar.

Google has also rolled out a new Gmail favicon that looks like the icon used by Gmail’s Chrome app. It’s also close to the iOS app’s icon.

Watch the new Gmail inbox in action below:

Update 06/24:You can now attach images in Gmail using drag and drop. Now you can attach photos even when you use drag and drop: just drag the photos to the small area at the bottom of the compose box that says “Attach files here”. If you drag photos to the much bigger “Drop file here” area, Gmail will embed them.

Google Calendar on Android update rolling out today now allows you to customize event and calendar colors directly from your device.

“You can now highlight those super-urgent meetings and important birthdays, or just switch up the color of your calendar whenever your heart desires.”

Also, the redesigned date and time pickers, make it easier adding events, “now you can schedule events.” And, to schedule repeating events, you can now set events to repeat every Tuesday and Thursday, every month, or every 7 weeks, it’s completely up to you.

Google has also redesigned timezone picker, that makes it simpler to find the region that you’re looking for.

Finally, a new Google Admin app for Android released today, makes it easy for Google Apps admins to use their Android phone or tablet to accomplish the most common tasks–such as “quickly adding or suspending users, resetting passwords, managing group memberships, and directly calling or emailing specific users.”

The app designed for admins, requires API access to be enabled. To learn more or contact support, visit the Help Center.

Deepak Gupta is a IT & Web Consultant. He is the founder and CEO of diTii.com & DIT Technologies, where he's engaged in providing Technology Consultancy, Design and Development of Desktop, Web and Mobile applications using various tools and softwares. Sign-up for the Email for daily updates. Google+ Profile.